US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

longest SOTU since 1995, second-longest in 50 years

prescription prices "will drop - watch"

...in an initiative to be headed up by my new FDA Commissioner Martin Shkreli...

luntz is a right winger, no?

he's the top of class GOP messaging guru advice god

so ... did you expect anything else?

I think the Kennedys need to work on bringing in some genetic diversity.

nope. but i expect to see a lot of takes like his - "This speech represents the presidential performance that Trump observers have been waiting for", not just among the right wing media but the rest as well. it's going to be nauseating

xpost

Why is this Kennedy doing the rebuttal and not like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris

Someone who is an adult

bc you don't waste good (useful) people on this shit

never send your serious candidates for the SOTU followup i guess? xp lol

the presidential performance

description otm.

any speech is a performance to an audience. it has little connection to overall job performance, other than that part of the job of being president is performative (the bully pulpit). no matter how many cheers Trump evoked tonight, his job performance has been pretty shitty. that won't change, because he won't change. tomorrow it will all look as it did yesterday, other than a bunch of newspaper stories about this speech, with varying degrees of unmerited flattery.

This was also a sleazy, manipulative speech that involved dark insinuations about North Korea and him taking sole credit for every positive trend in the economy.

It wasn’t presidential

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/trumps-solution-to-americas-crisis-nationalism/2018/01/30/db5f15f4-062f-11e8-94e8-e8b8600ade23_story.html

only watched like 5 minutes but he sounded pilled out

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/30/state-of-the-union-fact-check-trumps-address-analyzed

The #SOTU speech is really boring, slow, lethargic - very hard to watch!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/30/fact-checking-the-2018-state-of-the-union-address/?utm_term=.0b8891946c8f

Some of the same items as that Guardian one.

many dubious facts and figures. Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them.

Here is a guide to 18 claims, in the order in which Trump made them

Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them.

Here is a guide to 18 claims,

https://media.giphy.com/media/Dxb9vPUbXyYX6/giphy_s.gif

Are the Democrats attractive enough to get people motivated to vote for them in a way other than not being Trump.
I thought one major factor in 2016 was apathy in getting people out to vote. Knowing that the Republican base is actually going to show up to actively vote, but staying home and thinking the vote would be carried the way it should be anyway.

Hoping the outrageous awfulness is enough motivation in itself is probably not enough. Do the Dems have enough of a pull factor.

Man, the state of the union amirite?

"“one American family."

Think the fact checkers missed this one.

https://d2ffutrenqvap3.cloudfront.net/items/1m3Y0j0D0U3V1C061606/Are%20We.jpg

xxp AFAIK the Dems' whole platform is just "we're the adults in the room, who else are you going to vote for?" In other words they're still on their boss-level tepid uninspired bullshit that captures none of the zeitgeist, pretty much across the board. I still couldn't name a single exciting voice in the party except for Bernie, who's actually a democratic socialist. It's really fucking depressing.

Warren. Anyone could be an exciting voice by directly addressing the rampant inequality of all forms in our society and how it is enabled by the inappropriate influence of corporate power over policy. It’s really a one weird trick kind of situation.

It’s important to remain disgusted by Trump and the norms he is ripping apart but that can’t be the center of the message. For one, Trump isn’t the root cause of any of Ameica’s ills. He was only able to be elected because our politics had become profoundly stupid to begin with.

I agree with that

jersey strong

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/01/what_jersey_thinks_of_president_trump.html

so what you're saying is, Ironstache for President

I find the whole "it's fine that they put a wetmouthed loser kid up to do the SOTU response cause it doesn't matter and it's always lame" argument hilarious and telling. I submit that maybe if you have the attention of a shit-ton of people you should endeavor to rise above expectations?

Ehhh, if you make the mistake of raising expectations, people then expect you to live up to them. Which is haaaaaard, and booooooring, uggghhhh.

Quite a few people I know earnestly believe the Dem establishment doesn't really want to win and it's getting harder to argue with them

otoh Bernie can go get fucked

I am strongly supportive of sanctions on Russia and North Korea. However, I worry very much about President Trump’s approach to Iran.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 27, 2017

Unfortunate because sanctions only really hurt the people, not the aristocracy, yes? I only have a vague sense of how that works, but so I've heard

That, but mainly (for me) the whole needless antagonizing thing

who/what is he antagonizing?

The states he mentioned. the rhetorical dick-measuring accomplishes nothing ("strongly supportive," oh fuck off) and is the last thing you need to counter an administration that's fond of saber rattling. just leave the subject alone or, heaven forbid, maybe express some solidarity or actual human interest with the citizens of those nations. (I don't actually expect that from bernie at all, but it would be nice.)

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/health/cdc-director-fitzgerald-resigns-bn/index.html

CDC director had financial interest in tobacco industry... and had to resign for it???! outrageous!clearly the #deepstate #swamp has not been #drained. i hope the president launches an immediate investigation into how this got #leaked.

xp I don't think advocating sanctions on Russia given the context is inflammatory.

I infer from the rest that he disapproves of the president's warmongering on NKorea (sanctions will do) and his bluster about scrapping the Iran nuclear deal?

Great that the media coverage of the “Dean Scream” defines how we readily look at everything now.

“they put a wet mouthed loser kid up to to the SOTU response...”

"settling" for / compromising down to sanctions as an alternative to outright warmongering is weak tea garbage and he consistently misses opportunities to put forward a truly alternative vision of foreign policy, something he's better placed than anyone else to do

NP are you implying JK does not fit that description

I'm frankly agog that a member of the Trump administration has stepped down over a conflict of interest rather than flipping the American public off as hard as she could. What universe are we in again?

Well I think we have everything summarized nicely here

House GOP aide tells me the train carrying members to the GOP retreat hit a garbage truck, and members are fine.

But there could be potentially serious injuries to the people who were inside the truck, per the aide.

— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) January 31, 2018

Could be. We didn't really stop to check.

how could they distinguish the garbage truck from GOP members

ah there it is again - the queasy, vertiginous feeling that reality is being orchestrated by writers of terrible, obvious satire

Was the garbage truck on fire?

some reports saying everyone is fine, some saying someone is dead.

twats on twitter calling it false flag, for some reason